


don't hide away (there's something to be said for pushing through)

by Chill_with_Penguins



Series: I'll Catch You, Darling [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Buffy Summers Needs A Hug, Buffy had a life in LA, Communication, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, F/M, Faith doesn't go bad, Fluff and Angst, Healing, Healthy Relationships, I couldn't find a character tag for her but Anne from 3x01 is in this kinda a lot, Not Beta Read, Post-Season/Series 02, Season 3 AU, Swearing, an alternate take on LA and what comes after, and also a tea cozy, but we know how that goes, she wasn't even supposed to be in this, so here have my rant, so here's Therapist!Faith i guess, so it irritates me that they argue for one episode and then never bring it up again, we stan talking about your feelings rather than just bottling it all up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:35:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29243679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chill_with_Penguins/pseuds/Chill_with_Penguins
Summary: Buffy realizes pretty quickly that when you come back from the missing-slash-presumed-dead, no matter how many questions people ask, there are some things they don't want to hear about. Cordelia, strangely, serves as a source of comfort: their feet move in perfect time until the brunette girl turns abruptly to face her."You fucked up," Cordy says, matter of fact. She's not being kind, but she's not being cruel, either. She's just being Cordelia, which is strangely reassuring. "I don't know what you were going through, and to be honest, I don't think I want to, because it was probably really dark and scary and horrifying. But you shouldn't have left. The answer is never leaving."~A season 3 AU in which Buffy comes back from L.A. to strained relationships, Faith accidentally becomes the Scoobies' therapist, and everything goes a little better when characters can learn how to have healthy, open communication.(Or: Dead Man's Party did not do justice to the amount of emotional aftermath from the season 2 finale/season 3 pilot, so I stretched those arguments and rebuilding trust out across most of season 3. And now Buffy's friends with Gunn. There, see? Better already.)
Relationships: Angel/Buffy Summers, Faith Lehane & Buffy Summers, Faith Lehane/Buffy Summers
Series: I'll Catch You, Darling [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2147289
Comments: 17
Kudos: 61





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, lovelies! Two quick notes:
> 
> 1\. Before I forget: title (both of this story and of the series) is from "Deadlines and Commitments" by the Killers; check it out because it is.... a slow and vaguely heart-achy bop? Is that a thing? It's a thing now, I've decided.
> 
> 2\. Some quick backstory for this: I was watching the season 2 finale/season 3 episodes 1 and 2 because HAHAHA WHAT ELSE WOULD I BE DOING THE NIGHT BEFORE A BIG EXAM AMIRITE and I thought to myself, "self, what do you think she was doing in LA for those months we don't get shown? what are the odds that she ran into Gunn? why can't they all sit down over some tea when she gets back and talk it out instead of having a meltdown at a zombie-infested party where she nearly leaves again?" And then.... well. Faith wasn't even supposed to be in this fic, but I decided to give her a brief mention just to keep it cannon-adjacent, and then she just had to butt in and try to fix everything and form a close friendship with Buffy, and I was all like, "okay, fine, whatever, just don't hook up with her bc I have Plans" and then WHAT DOES SHE FUCKING DO.
> 
> (As always, my characters are insubordinate and I am a Hot Mess.)

Buffy realizes pretty quickly that when you come back from the missing-slash-presumed-dead, no matter how many questions people ask, there are some things they don't want to hear about. Some things they don't want to know. Her mom says  _ where were you _ but what she means is  _ stay _ . Willow and Xander curl around her at the Bronze, ask her what she did all that time, looking for crazy stories to catch up on, but what they mean is  _ how could you leave _ . Cordelia, strangely, serves as a source of comfort: their feet move in perfect time as they make their way down the hallway, a quiet kind of tension in the air, until the brunette girl turns abruptly to face her.

"You fucked up," Cordy says, matter of fact. She's not being kind, but she's not being cruel, either. She's just being Cordelia, which is strangely reassuring. "I don't know what you were going through, and to be honest, I don't think I want to, because it was probably really dark and scary and horrifying. But you shouldn't have left. The answer is never leaving."

The questions circle around her, a strange, secret code they all understand, but speak in anyways.

"You stayed away for quite some time," Giles says, a quiet kind of disappointment in his voice. She thinks about all the things she could say in response:  _ when I stabbed Angel we were both crying _ or  _ did you know that hell dimensions move a lot faster than our world _ or  _ I once saw a homeless kid get beaten half to death and every pedestrian just kept walking. _

"Yeah," she says instead. "Sorry."

It feels like it's all she can say, these days.

-

A list of things Buffy learned in those three months that she will never tell them:

  1. When you're living on cash paychecks at minimum wage, you have to budget very carefully, or else rent and utilities and bus money will creep up on you and you'll be left with an empty stomach that hurts for days
  2. Never stick a soup can in the microwave
  3. Gangs bring violence, but they also bring protection if you find the right people and offer the right skills
  4. Sometimes in order to survive, you have to put on your apron and a too-tight smile and pretend not to notice when the old men leer at the hem of your skirt because tips mean the difference between hot and cold water for the next month and you can't afford to get sick
  5. How to hotwire a car
  6. Don't shy away from offers of help, no matter who's offering; beggars can't be choosers
  7. They card for buying NyQuil
  8. If you're fast and clever enough, they'll never get the chance to make you pay, much less card you



* * *

Buffy knew going back to school would be rough. She just didn't expect… this. She sits on one side of the desk, her mother practically vibrating with rage beside her, and Snyder's cruel smirk across from them both while the afternoon light pierces through the window. There's a part of her that's angry, sure. She's gone through so much, too much to be stopped by this little man and his pettiness, and you don't wipe out seventeen years of instinct in three months.

But there's also the part of her that can't help but feel older. Heavier. She looks at this man who thinks himself a tyrant, a ruler. She used to look at him and see an enemy, someone unfair and out to get her. Now she looks and sees… a little man, full of bitterness and petty enough to take it out on his students. It's not fair, but not much in life is. It's not evil either, though. Evil is a term she'll be restricting to demons who enslave the homeless, for ex-boyfriends who murder her teachers and torture her friends, for whatever godforsaken power in the universe is sitting up there and laughing hysterically at her expense right now.

There was a time when she thought Snyder was evil. Now, she just thinks he's pathetic.

* * *

For all that Buffy tried to stay away from the slayage, there were still some nights when she thought she might vibrate out of her skin, nights when she came home from work shaking with all the anger burning her bones. So every once in a while she'd wander out of her apartment and walk up and down the streets, scavenging wood from broken down pallets to serve as a stake.

She runs into some street kids, a couple of times. They're all angry, hot-headed children warriors charging into battle with a pickup truck and not much else. A kid named Gunn leads them; his eyes are always dark with fire and hurt unless he's looking at his sister, or one of the kids under his care. (Buffy can relate.)

When she tries to call them out on it, though, Gunn will take none of her shit.

"You're going to get yourselves killed!" she says, thinking of all the times that she had lost teenagers too stupid to not wander down that dark alley, to know that humans might as well be made of glass and that battles  _ hurt _ . "You're just kids, you don't know what you're doing!"

"Yeah? You're no different," he snaps.

Buffy opens her mouth to counter, to say that she has a sacred duty, but--well. The whole point of this was that she's not, wasn't it? She's not the Slayer here. She's not even Buffy. She's Anne, and when she goes out at night, she's just a girl trembling with rage and looking for an outlet. That's not slaying. It's not, if she's honest, much different from what they're doing.

It takes more effort than she'd like to admit, but she shuts up and listens. They let her come to their base after the third run-in, when she's paler than usual and cradling her broken arm. They give her the last can of chicken-noodle and tell her she's always welcome.

The next time someone needs medical attention, she offers up her apartment. It's not exactly a surprise when they start showing up there ever so often, invading her space on particularly cold nights and bunking on the floor. She has to admit, grudgingly, that it's kind of nice to not be alone.

* * *

It's weird, being a kid again. Logically, no birthdays have passed. None passed when she was in LA, or even when she was fighting Angel, for that matter--she's been seventeen for months, since the beginning of it all. And yet, she feels like she's taken a dozen steps backwards--it feels weird to have chores, to do homework, to ask her mom for permission to go out. Her usual payday passes and everything about not having a job chafes at her; she gives up halfway through the night and goes downstairs to count the meals they have left and dig through her mom's mail to find out how much they spent on electricity that month.

_Everything is fine_ , she tells herself. She says it while she's brushing her teeth, while she's on patrol, while she's talking to the others, a too-tight smile pulling at her face. It feels like a mantra, but it doesn't work.

(Even now, months later and Over It as far as anyone's concerned, she'll close her eyes and see Angel's face the moment that the sword plunged through his gut. She'll see newer horrors, too: children with blue fingertips, sweating through their layers because they can't afford a doctor; a middle-aged woman with wild eyes wincing away from the crack of a whip; the molten shade of fear in her neighbor's face the first time she came back covered in blood.)

(She's not fine and she doesn't know how to say that.)

* * *

A month. That's how long she lasts before she gives in to the itch and starts asking around about a job.

She doesn't mention it to anyone, because she doesn't know how. How do you start that sentence without explaining how wrong it feels to have nothing to your name, no emergency funds for food or rent or utilities? She's 17 going on ancient, and she feels where the worry lines should crease her face, and no one wants to know. They're all trying to move past it, to tiptoe around the subject and never bring it up. The last thing they want is to hear about her months away.

But the universe does as the universe does, and inevitably, she and Giles wind up fighting about it. The conversation goes something like this:

"Where are you going? You have to patrol tonight."

(Buffy, sighing:) "I can't; I have a shift at work."

"Work? Since when do you have a job?"

"Since about a week ago. It's nothing big, I just show up, serve some pie, and leave. Oh, and I get paid. I'm hoping if I do really well they'll give me a shiny gold coin."

"I don't think you should be working, you have school and Slayer duties to focus on."

"Yeah, well, fighting the forces of darkness isn't gonna get me a prom dress, so."

Cue Giles going off about sacred duties, Buffy countering with the fact that she is, in fact, a real human being and not just a piece of medieval lore brought to life, back and forth and back and forth.

Some days, she swears she's just living the same arguments over and over.

* * *

The new Slayer comes to town and all Buffy can see is those kids on the street, all she can think about is the way it felt to be cold and hungry and know it'll be two days before you get your next check.

Faith walks into battle at her side with something sharp in each hand and a wicked smile on her face and all Buffy can think is how much she wishes the new Slayer and Gunn could meet.

* * *

Willow asks, just once. Buffy's just hung up the phone when her best friend wanders over, curiosity in her gaze.

"Who was that?" the redhead asks. Everyone they know is the next room over, after all.

"Just a friend from LA," Buffy says, trying for a weak smile. She's not sure whether or not it works. She just got off the phone with Anne and Gunn (she'd introduced the two before she left LA), hearing the background chaos as the other kids all crashed around her old apartment, and something in her feels raw and exposed. _Maybe,_ some part of her whispers, _you've got it all wrong, maybe they want to know, maybe she'll ask and you can finally tell someone--_

Willow won't meet her gaze, just mumbles something about that being cool and how they should probably get back to work if they're going to figure out this business with the Mayor. Buffy does her best to hold back a sigh.

Figures.

Oh, well. Back to work she goes.

* * *

The job at the diner is all that keeps her sane, some days. She'll leave school fuming, hating the way the suddenly too-small building chafes at her skin. It's hard to jump between the different mindsets, between keeping an eye on the clock so you don't run late for your lunch break and letting bells dictate everything about when and where you go. Some days, it's nice to be back in school, to mindlessly follow her schedule and stare out the window and laugh with her friends. Others, everything about it feels wrong--she doesn't want to work but school feels like a waste of time, like hours where she could've worked or slept or gone on patrol but didn't.

On those days, she'll take the five-block walk to calm herself down and burn off a little energy. Then she's at work, where she has to smile and be nice to customers and make small talk, and after a while the anger kind of falls away because she has too much to do to be angry. It's… nice. Solid. For a little while, despite what it says on her name tag, she isn't Buffy. She's Anne again.

It's like visiting an old friend, almost.

(The slowly growing number in her savings account doesn't hurt, either.)

* * *

She keeps in touch with Anne. She doesn't really know why; she hadn't actually meant to, when she left LA to go home. She'd meant to call and check in every once in awhile, to make sure the other girl was still alive, but that was really it.

And to some extent, that is what happens--it's not like she's making nightly or even weekly calls to LA to check in. She calls sporadically; sometimes at lunch, sometimes at two in the morning, sometimes on her walk to work. Mostly, she calls when everything about Sunnydale is wrong, itching at her skin and making her instincts flare up with anxious energy. When being Buffy feels too much, too heavy with responsibility and pressure, she'll call Anne. If anyone asked her, she couldn't quite explain why, but something about it is… soothing. She'll take fifteen minutes to listen to Anne's babble about the latest rude customers and food bank shenanigans and how Gunn and the other kids are doing.

Once, she tells everyone she's going to tour UCLA for a weekend and takes off. She doesn't mean for it to be a lie--she registered for the prospective students weekend and everything--but as soon as she sees the city skyline she knows that's not where she's going. She can't see her old apartment building from the interstate, but her eyes are drawn to where she knows it's tucked away. She'd like to say that she's suddenly homesick but that's not the truth. Nothing about the homesickness is sudden; it's been building for weeks, a slow and steadily creeping sensation of wanting to go back to that freer existence.

Living in LA was far from fun and games, but there was something satisfying about it. Something honest in a way a suburbia like Sunnydale can't be. There, she was just one more face in the crowd, another young woman working to make rent. Being Anne didn't have all the strings that being Buffy has, and it's hard not to miss that; especially when most days lately she feels caught between the two, stretched too thin and all the more vulnerable for it.

It's not until she's down the hall that it occurs to her that Anne might not even be there, that she might be at work or out and about or volunteering at one of the thousand charities she's always telling Buffy about. But the universe must be feeling generous today, because when she pauses in front of the door, she can hear laughter bubbling out from inside; it only takes her a second longer to work up the courage to knock. When the door swings open, Anne is there, smiling prettily, and Buffy can just make out Gunn and Alonna sprawled on the floor in the living room.

"Buffy!" Anne says, looking surprised and delighted. She wraps Buffy in a big hug and Buffy hugs her back, suddenly warm down to her bones in a way she still isn't back home, even after everyone has mostly defrosted. Her mom and the Scoobies aren't mad at her anymore, but even after all these months, they still tiptoe around the topic of her summer, trying so hard not to remind anyone of her absence. It feels better than she can put into words to finally be back with people who she doesn't have to censor herself with; she doesn't need to think about every sentence she chooses, because they know most of it already and anything they don't they wouldn't judge her for.

Gunn spends about ten minutes teasing her for how her time away has softened her, how she probably runs away from vamps in her little picture-perfect town. Alonna lets him get away with it for a little while, but she shuts him down with her sass as usual, cutting in with a sharp "you done yet?"

Gunn grumbles but shuts up, throwing one arm over Buffy's shoulder and pulling her to the ground with him, half-heartedly trying to pin her. Buffy counters with a human-strength elbow to the gut and flips their positions, while in the background Anne murmurs to herself about the betting potential of Slayer cage fights. Alonna rolls her eyes at all of them good-naturedly and then looks right at Buffy, a soft and genuine smile gracing her lips. She stands over them with her hands on her hips, feet braced to keep balance, looking every bit the protector that Buffy and Faith try so hard to be.

"Welcome home, Buffy," she says.

(God, she loves these people.)

* * *

A brief list of the things Buffy learned in those three months that she will always be grateful to know:

  1. How to read a lease
  2. How utilities work, and the loopholes to keep your costs down
  3. How to self-advocate for a pay raise when you need one
  4. No matter how bad you have it, there's always someone out there who has it worse
  5. Three words: Grocery. Shopping. Coupons.
  6. If you know where to look and how to ask, there's always someone who will help you
  7. Public libraries are a vastly underutilized resource that not enough people appreciate: they provide free knowledge, internet connection, and AC when yours is out
  8. The more you learn, the more you can help others
  9. There's always someone who needs help, with demons or otherwise



* * *

When Faith stabs a human, Buffy calls an ambulance and files an anonymous tip that some strange man just attacked someone and ran away. She makes a rudimentary bandage--this isn’t the first time she’s had to crouch in an alley, holding someone’s lifeblood, and Gunn had made sure she knew what the hell she was doing--and then she grabs the other Slayer by the wrist and runs like hell until they're a dozen blocks away, sheltered behind a small mountain of broken-down cardboard boxes. She helps Faith through the panic attack, sits with her until they can both breath normally and not look like fugitives, and talks Faith down from running.

"I gotta get out, B, I can't--" the dark-haired Slayer gasps, the shock giving her hands tremors. Buffy wraps her own hands around Faith's, and for a minute everything that just happened catches up with her and she stops. She feels vaguely numb and all she can see is the color contrast of their nails, painted different hues under the drying blood on both of them, and _oh fuck a man probably just died_.

Then she takes a deep breath and pulls herself together. There's only room for one panicking Slayer at a time, and right now, Faith has dibs.

"I never said we aren't going to get out. I said we're not going to run; there's a difference."

Buffy makes sure that Faith is okay to sit still for a minute, and then she's up and pacing to the end of the alley, dialing on the payphone a little too quickly to be efficient. She leaves two messages: one for her mom, telling her that she and Faith had to make an emergency run to LA to deal with a runaway demon but that they'll be back before the weekend is over okay-love-you-bye, the other to Anne, letting her know that Buffy needs to call in a favor and some couch cushions for a night or two.

"C'mon," she says softly, offering a hand up to Faith when she's done. "I've got a friend we're gonna stay with until this blows over."

* * *

Faith and Gunn dance around each other at first, two predators waiting to see who would be dominant, but the more time they spend together the better they get along. Buffy leans against the kitchen cabinet, Anne on one side and an open view of her friends laughing on the floor on the other and a warm mug in her hands, and does her very best not to run in circles screaming  _ I knew it _ while Gunn and Faith bond over favorite pointy instruments of death.

When she gets back, there will be hell to pay from her mom and Giles. She's pretty sure that everyone back home is currently fuming with anger, but--but yesterday Faith was bloodstained and shaking. Right now she's trying to talk Buffy's LA friends into going to a nightclub. The distraction was worth it, completely and absolutely: after the first few hours in the city and the news that the man had pulled through, Faith had stopped flinching at the sound of sirens. Buffy suspects that someday far from now, she might actually be okay. That they might all be.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coming back is, predictably, a shitshow. 
> 
> (or: things get better, slowly.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. Just... wow. I was so nervous about putting up the first chapter and you were all so sweet and supportive??? So thank you, so much! Here's hoping part two successfully wraps this up. As always, happy reading and come scream with me in the comments <3

Coming back is, predictably, a shitshow. Buffy gets every conceivable response from a variety of sources: the yelling from her mom and Giles, the cold shoulder from Xander, the hurt and betrayed look from Willow as she trails behind him; even Snyder has somehow heard about it and brushes past her with a smug remark about spots not changing in the hall. It will pass, it always does, but for the moment it stings like a fresh papercut. She's put in so much work, tried so hard to be the girl they wanted her to, and now--back to square zero. Maybe negative squares, actually, if that's possible.

The difference: this time, she's not alone. This time, when her mom is chewing her out and her friends are tiptoeing around her like she's a mine about to go off, Faith is standing right beside her, watching it all go down with increasingly disbelieving looks. When Giles is lecturing her about sacred responsibilities, Buffy actually chokes on a laugh instead of a sob this time--Faith is swiveling her head back and forth so quickly that her hair hasn't been stagnant in several moments, and her eyebrows have climbed to a comical altitude on the other Slayer's face.

At night, when Faith creeps into her room and perches on her bed, there's something soft in her expression that Buffy's never seen before. The dark-haired girl leans forward, grabbing Buffy's hand tight in hers even as her gaze strays to the bedspread, the wall, the window, to anywhere that isn't Buffy's eyes.

"They don't get it, B," she says, understanding in a way so few people have been. "They shouldn't say those things no matter what, but they don't get it."

Buffy could think of a million and one responses to that, ones that range from  _ it's not their fault _ to  _ god I wish I could make them see _ , but what comes out of her mouth is, "But you do, don't you? You understand."

Faith leans back, all lean muscle and scar tissue, and grins. Everything about her screams glass: she is a girl with sharp edges who will cut everything around her when she shatters; a dangerous, breakable thing.

(Except: that's not true, is it? Because Faith was never a piece of anything; she was herself, a girl who made mistakes and choices and  _ people don't just break _ \--)

"Yeah," she says, this girl who has been running longer than she's ever stayed in a home, who stares at her steady, clean hands with haunted eyes. This girl who Buffy already knows will never forget the might-have-been. "I get it."

* * *

"Okay, I'm out of juicy ex stories," Faith says late one night, twirling herself around a light pole out of boredom. It's been three hours and they've only found one vamp between the two of them. "Tell me about Angel."

Buffy feels that old instinct crawl up in her throat, the one that demands that she doesn't even think that name because of how much it hurts, like a sucker punch to the gut, but--

But Faith, sitting on her bed in the dark and understanding. Faith saving Buffy's life every other night. Faith laughing with Gunn and Anne and not asking why, exactly, Gunn is always over; not having to ask because she's been there, too.

"Angel was… complicated," Buffy says, sighing a little. It hurts to think of him, of course it does, but her eyes flicker sideways and for the first time she hopes someone else might know what it is to feel something ancient and bone-deep pulling you forward. "But here's the gist…"

* * *

Buffy has the strangest sense of deja vu, curled up on the armchair in the Bronze. Willow and Xander and Cordelia are all sprawled on the seat across from her, while Oz is getting drinks at the bar and Faith is perched, cross-legged, on the armchair next to Buffy. Across from her, her friends are asking every question but the ones that count, making small talk about classes and projects and the latest funny Giles story about almost ruining old books and getting chased out of the library. She feels like it is three months ago and she's just beginning to realize that coming back might not be any better than if she'd stayed; like everything she's worked for had just looped back around and she doesn't quite know how to go about fixing any of it, so instead she's just sinking deeper and deeper into her chest with no way to crawl back out.

Beside her, Faith slugs back the rest of her drink, lets out a loud belch, then leans forward to let her empty glass slam against the table.

"So," she says, perfectly bland and calm, as though she was discussing the weather. "I stabbed a human."

* * *

Unsurprisingly, the Scoobies freak out. Equally unsurprisingly, Giles wants to call the Council and Mom wants to call the police. Things get worked out, but not until they more or less lock everyone in a room together and enforce the "everyone gets a chance to talk on their turn" thing.

Buffy's never considered teaching kindergarten before, but now she thinks she might have a hidden knack for it. Presuming, of course, that all the parents are okay with her threatening a lot of violence if the kids don't listen to her.

(Yeah, okay, maybe not so much.)

But everyone sits down and listens and even if they aren't okay with it--even if some of them are pretty much the opposite of okay with it--they all acknowledge that it was really and truly an accident, which is honestly more than Buffy could've hoped for. At the very least, this part doesn't feel like she's regressed to just-back-from-the-summer Buffy; these are all new frustrating situations, rather than repeats.

And this strange pattern--Faith sticking up for her, even when all anyone else can see is a series of childish mistakes--holds true even here. When Faith is explaining herself, she also tells them all that Buffy took her away to stay in LA while they figured out what to do, that she had made a smart move and kept them from getting tangled up in whatever was about to go down, that she called the ambulance and saved his life and both their hides. At the end of the night, no one is happy, exactly, but people aren't blaming Buffy. And given how quickly she'd shut that shit down when they tried to blame Faith, too, neither of the Slayers are being distrusted for choices they made.

It's a feeling Buffy'd missed, these past few months. One she thinks she could get used to.

* * *

In the background: the Mayor, smiling benignly from behind Costco-sized bottles of hand sanitizer.

"Sir, the Slayers took out another nest of our forces last night," the nervous vamp says, shifting back and forth on his feet. He's just been promoted; the last guy with this job had been around for two hundred years and still didn't make it out alive.

"Well," says the ~~(man? demon?)~~ thing behind the desk, "Guess we'll just have to try even harder next time. No one said killing Slayers would be easy, after all!"

* * *

"You haven't been back there, have you?" Faith asks one day, understanding dawning in her eyes. She's cutting through the middle of an entirely separate conversation the Scoobies are having and doesn't look the least bit apologetic.

"Been where?" Buffy responds absentmindedly; she's still lost in thoughts of tests and homework and the upcoming senior prom.

"To the mansion."

There's an awkward moment of sudden silence, everyone looking uncomfortable.

"Well, of course she hasn't--" Willow starts, then glances sideways at Buffy uneasily. "You haven't, have you?"

"No," Buffy says quietly. "I haven't. Why?"

"We should go," Faith announces, standing and grabbing her jacket from the back of the chair. "Have a picnic or somethin'."

"Not to speak for the peanut gallery or anything but on behalf of the peanut gallery: have you actually gone insane?" Xander says, mouth gaping open a little. "Why would anyone want to go back there?"

Faith glances around, reading the room, but she comes back to Buffy to hold eye contact while she speaks. "You're still running, B. Trust me, if there's one thing I know, it's running away. You need to go back and see that there's nothing inherently evil about that place."

Buffy's mouth twists into a frown. "But I don't really think that--"

"Up, all of you," Faith orders. "Come on, come on… God, if this is how long it takes you to pull yourselves together, it's amazing you got along before me..."

* * *

So they go. They actually have a goddamn picnic in that corpse of a building, blanket and all, and make each other laugh until the shadows feel a little less looming. They talk about dress color schemes and whether or not to try the limo thing again (a strong no from all sides), about what they'll do after graduation.

Buffy's pretty sure she'll never stop being--surprised? Amazed? Relieved?--whatever she is to have Faith by her side.

And then: Angel.

* * *

He crashes through the portal in the ceiling above them, butt-naked and more animal than person, and lands inches away from Joyce's pecan pie. Most of the Scoobies jolt backward, going pale and still, every inch prey; Faith is already grabbing for weapons because she doesn't know who the hell that is and Buffy--Buffy is sitting and staring and forgetting, a little, what it is to breathe. To have a heartbeat. She's half-sure the past few months have been one long nightmare and she'll wake up to the sound of sirens any second now, Anne and aching with the lingering hurt of first heartbreak, because this cannot be happening.

Faith waits only as long as it takes to see his face, the usual vampire bumpies, and grab a stake rather than her daggers before she's up and moving.

"Wait!" Buffy shouts, and it should be too late, everything should be spiraling out of control; Buffy can already see this playing out, a Shakespearean tragedy in her mind, but--but the other Slayer stops, pulls her punch just enough to knock out rather than kill. Buffy remembers suddenly that Faith trusts her, will listen when she calls out, and thanks every deity out there for the other Slayer. Angel drops to the ground, unmoving but still very much not a pile of dust, and Buffy's heart starts back up again.

"Wait?!" Giles demands incredulously. If she could look anywhere but at her undead ex she would see the betrayal on his face, but she can't so she doesn't.

Instead, she's up and moving before her mind has the time to catch up, tugging the blanket out from underneath the food like one of those TV magic tricks. She lays it over her (un-then-re-then-un) dead lover and reminds her heart to keep beating, please, she's not ready to give up on life quite yet.

"Buffy, what're you doing, he's gonna kill--" Willow starts, scrambling backward.

"Angel got his soul back, at the very end," Buffy says, stumbling through the explanation quickly, her mind only half on it. "The spell worked, he was himself again, but the portal was opening and I had to kill him anyway. He might still be him, we can't just kill him."

She doesn't spare a thought for the fact that this is the first time those words have ever passed her lips. She's never said that out loud before to anyone; she talked around it once and Faith read between the lines, frowning and offering soft condolences, but she's never told anyone the truth like that. Later, she'll have time to think about it, about the way guilt and relief flickered across her friends' faces, but for now--

Well. Buffy is reeling, probably will be for a while, from the knee-weakening joy coursing through her. She'll be able to deal with everything else later; the messy aftermath and the half-feral ex-boyfriend and the guilt she'll spend weeks ripping herself up over because seriously? All she needed to do was come back here and he would've reappeared?

Later. For now, he's here and he's hurt but he's whole and that's all she could've asked for.

* * *

"So that's him, huh?" Faith asks, curled up on her bed that night. They're both eating discount chocolate and microwave butter popcorn by the handful, because it's been that kind of day. Maybe that kind of year, actually.

"That's him," she agrees, staring blankly at a wall. Her head hurts too much right now to even think about doing something else.

"Well, at least you've got good taste," Faith says, sounding about as tired as Buffy feels. "He's cute, in a broody way."

Buffy isn't sure when the laughter starts, but she can feel it deep in her belly, making her shoulders shake until she's got tears rolling down her cheeks. Beside her, Faith is laughing too, inches away from rolling off the bed. She couldn't really pinpoint what they're laughing at if she tried--vampire/Slayer mishaps? The sheer irony of the world? The fact that last night they'd called Gunn and Anne and played Taboo over the phone for two hours, and tonight they're bomb shelled versions of themselves?--but it feels good, so she doesn't do anything to try and stop.

Eventually, she can feel her breaths evening out again, little hiccuping giggles still erupting every now and then. "Yeah," she finally manages, "he's cute, I guess."

* * *

Prom comes and in between working with Angel to get him back to himself and fighting off the Mayor's goons, they find the time to kick some hellhound ass. They're halfway through cleaning up the bodies when they hear muffled whines from the back of the room; it takes them a few minutes to pick through the mess left over from the fight but they manage to get back to a smaller crate in the corner with the smallest, most adorably black-furred red-eyed hellhound pup. Buffy is more than a little bit in love.

"Faith--" she starts, glancing over, and the other girl is already shaking her head emphatically no.

"Absolutely not, B, your mom'll kill the both of us. Besides, I'm not really a pet kind of person."

Buffy kneels down and opens the cage, and the pup comes rushing out. It's barely the size of her hand and wagging its stubby little tail so hard that it almost falls over. If she can look past the tiny, baby razor-sharp teeth and glowing red eyes, she can totally believe it's a normal puppy.

"Okay but--"

"No way," Faith says, still shaking her head and backing away. She's eyeing the baby hellhound like it's a time bomb rather than a slightly-supernatural puppy.

"We could take care of him! We can't just leave him here, we probably just killed his mother!"

"What are you gonna do to take care of it? We know nothing about hellhounds, B, you can't keep it."

"Sure I could! We could take it for walks with us on patrol, and give him lots of red meat, and when he gets older we can train him to help protect us! C'mon, you know you want a guard dog."

"I hate guard dogs, they always try to bite me," Faith says flatly.

"His name is Snuggles," Buffy announces, pressing the warm little ball of fluff into the other Slayer's hands. Snuggles licks her chin and Faith melts.

* * *

Buffy comes downstairs from her shower and finds her mom pouring over envelopes and strings of numbers, one hand on her temple and her eyes pinched shut.

"Hey," she says, grabbing an apple on her way into the living room, "want some help?"

"Oh," Joyce says, startling a little, "that's sweet, honey, but it's just bills and stuff. I don't really think it's something you can help with."

"Try me," Buffy offers, perching on the arm of the couch and swinging her feet back and forth. "Even if I can't help, sometimes it's nice to have an extra set of eyes and someone to talk things through with, make sure your reasoning is sound."

"Really?" Joyce asks, wry humor in her voice, "You want to know about the monthly utilities?"

Buffy rolls her eyes a little. "Want is a strong word, but I'm just saying I can help. I did take care of this stuff while I was… away, you know."

Joyce straightens, watching her curiously. "Really?" This time, there's no disbelief in her question, just curiosity.

"Yeah. What'd you think, I was just living for free? I had to pay bills and rent and buy groceries and all that."

"I guess I just always assumed you had found a friend in LA to crash with, one I didn't know about and couldn't reach out to. Where did you live, then?" Joyce asks, her brow furrowing. "And how'd you afford it?"

Buffy blinks, startled. "Oh, no, I had a tiny apartment, a few blocks from a diner where I worked. I couldn't exactly get out of a lease just because I decided to come back here, so I passed it and the waitress job along to a friend of mine when I left."

Buffy watches as her mom pushes the papers away and scoots to the side, patting the couch cushion beside her with a smile, and doesn't quite know what to make of it. She thinks she might cry with relief, actually--finally, they're talking without tiptoeing around the idea of LA. Finally, they're talking at all.

"Tell me about it," Joyce says, pulling a warm blanket down to spread over them both.

So Buffy does.

* * *

"You were right," she tells Faith one night, the two of them curled into her bed. Snuggles is sprawled on his back between them, soaking up the belly rubs while his tongue lolls out of his mouth between pointed teeth.

"That's something I could get used to hearing," Faith jokes, "Which thing was I right about this time?"

"I'm still running," Buffy admits, not quite willing to meet her gaze. Instead, she focuses on Snuggles, ruffling his ear and smiling gently while he tries to grab her finger with his little paws and bite it playfully. He's grown a lot in the past few weeks, and with all the research Giles had done (once he was done throwing a fit about the inappropriate nature of a pet demon), Snuggles is getting the food and exercise he needed. As a result, his black coat was growing in clean and soft and at least sort of neat, rather than being a scraggly mess like the grown hellhounds she and Faith had killed. (More and more, she suspected that Tucker had been keeping them malnourished on purpose to make them extra aggressive.)

When she finally looks up, Faith is still watching her, an uncharacteristically patient look on her face. "And are you done running?"

"Maybe. I don't know. I got used to it, you know? So I probably won't stop yet. But I'm ready to start slowing down, at least," she admits. It's the first time she's said those words out loud, even though she's been thinking them for weeks, and it's--freeing. Awkward and vulnerable and hard to say out loud, but once they're out, she feels so much better for it.

That's sort of been the pattern for a lot of things in her life lately, actually.

"Well, it sounds like you have a game plan. What's next, B?" Faith asks.

"Next…" Buffy thinks for a minute, breathing through the way the future scares her, sprawling out in all directions. It's hard, choosing to live. To stop letting her past decisions and mistakes and heartbreaks map her path for her. But she does it.

Being the Chosen One can make her feel like she's walking a tightrope. Like there is nothing but destiny and prophecies and a Council of men telling her what to do. It can make it feel like the Slayer is nothing more than a puppet, like she is just reciting her lines in the big long play that is her life.

She's not. Buffy's proven to herself now that if she walks away, if she chooses to ignore what others tell her she is capable of, she can be whoever she wants. So now, the question that's been lurking in the back of her mind: does she choose to be Chosen? Choose to be the Slayer? To risk herself to save lives and protect the world and live with how unfair it all is?

She's not quite sure yet, but she has an idea of at least what comes next.

"Next," she says again, stronger this time, "I talk to my friends about LA. I kept getting upset because they weren't talking to me about it, because it felt like we were all tiptoeing around each other, but I never tried to explain my side. They shouldn't have assumed they knew what happened, and I shouldn't have left like I did, no warning and no way for them to know I was alive. Willow was right, everyone had stuff going on; I had responsibilities and I bailed. But even while she was talking about that she never asked me what my stuff was, everyone just assumed they knew the gist and judged me based on things that didn't happen. There were mistakes all around, on me as well as them, but I can't just wait around for things to fix themselves. So I'm gonna tell them the truth of what happened. I'm gonna take my mom and whoever else wants to come to meet Anne and Gunn and everyone. And then I'm gonna figure the rest of it out."

"There's my girl," Faith says with a smile. "Always knew you'd get there, B."

"That makes one of us," Buffy admits.

"C'mon," one Slayer says to another, "Let's get some hot chocolate."

They are an anomaly in the world, something not meant to function--but they do. They are. They live and work and slay and have a pet hellhound together and it shouldn't work but it does.

* * *

When they tell the Council to fuck off, that they'll face the Mayor on their own thank you very much if this is the kind of help they get, they do that together too.

* * *

"Who was that?" Willow asks when Buffy hangs up the phone with a quick gotta-go-call-you-later-love-you-bye. The redhead has meandered out of the Summers' living room with the bowl of popcorn clutched to her chest, which she holds out in offering to Buffy. Buffy takes a few pieces and opens her mouth to wave it off under the banner of "just a friend you don't know", but then she pauses.

Chooses.

"You remember when I told you about that girl who helped me in LA? The one who took over my apartment?"

"Yeah," Willow says, "Was that her?"

"Yeah. Her name's Anne. If you'd like, maybe next time I call her I could introduce you over the phone?"

Willow smiles softly and it feels like a victory, a triumph, a kind of peace settling over the land. Getting to this point has been hard work on all sides but it's worth it.

"Yeah," she says, "I'd like that."

* * *

Faith didn't go to Sunnydale High but she's still there at graduation, marching side by side with a recovered Angel to lead auxiliary troops into battle. She and Buffy lure the Mayor into an explosion that takes out the better part of the school; it isn't even hard, with how irritated they've made him in the past weeks. He's desperate to kill them and doesn't think past the relative size of his demon body to their swords.

"His loss," Buffy chirps with a shrug as Mayor-meat and charred diplomas rain down around them.

"And our gain," Faith finishes with a grin. She's practically bouncing on the balls of her feet, adrenaline and Slayer's instincts making her itch for a fight. Buffy has a feeling they'll be out for patrol for a long time tonight.

There's all the chaos of trying to find everyone's diplomas in the rubble, of counting the dead and helping with the cleanup while avoiding questioning by the first responders. Oz makes sure they take a moment to celebrate surviving high school, and Cordelia makes sure they take a moment to admire her shoes.

"Big demon, huh?" Willow says when they get a second alone.

"Yeah," Buffy agrees, huffing a little under the weight of the concrete pillar she's pushing to the side. "But we got him."

"We always do," the witch agrees. "Have you given any more thought to UC Sunnydale? I know you hadn't really decided last time we talked."

"Honestly? Not really. I told them I was taking a year; if I decide not to go then all I'm giving up is the deposit."

"What would you do instead?" Willow asks.

"I dunno," Buffy says, smiling a little at the thought. She doesn't have any ideas, really, but also nothing she's required to do, nowhere she has to be, and that's oddly freeing. "Work, slay, live. Probably go to the Bronze. I haven't really decided what to do, career-wise."

"Fair enough," Willow says, helping levitate some extra-crispy snake demon thing bones out of the way. "We've come a long way, you know."

"Yeah, I know," Buffy responds, watching her best friend do magic to move demon remains. "We've done a lot."

"Best friends forever?"

"Of course, you dork."

* * *

"Hey, do you guys think we could turn some of the Mayor-meat into Mayor-jerky for Snuggles? Like training treats?"

* * *

Angel comes to her while it's still all smokey, sirens and flashing lights cutting through the dark of the eclipse.

"I think it's time for me to move on," he says, and Buffy nods. There's a pang in her heart, and she thinks that's probably good. Normal. She loved him, once, and love isn't something that goes away, it's just something that changes and grows and settles into you. She loved him and she'll always love him a little bit, always care about him and how his (un)life is going. But he's right: it's time for him to move on.

"You think you're ready?" she asks.

"I do," he says, quiet and grateful. "And I wouldn't be if it wasn't for you. For all of you. Pass along my thanks?"

"Of course," Buffy smiles, "Where're you thinking of going?"

"I don't really know. Got any suggestions?"

"Yeah," she says, thinking of dark and winding streets, of brave kids and people who do their best and all the things she's learned in the past year. "Check out L.A.. I have a few friends there who I think you'll get along with."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Snuggles wasn't supposed to be a thing but I got into the zone while writing at work and then I didn't have the heart to cut him out. 
> 
> Also, this fic is done... but the series is just beginning! My goal for myself is to try and post something every Saturday this year, so I keep writing rather than putting off finishing all of my stories for four years (which, for those of you following along, is my usual pattern). Next week I'm going to be posting a non-BtVS one-shot that I wrapped up not too long ago, but after that I'm going to start posting chapters of the sequel, which is basically the events of this fic but from Faith's POV. I'm four chapters in now--Faith is surprisingly wordy--but I also have plans for a handful of sequels/character studies/one-shots on the side, so I hope you'll all stick with me as I work out my feelings about this show by fixing everything I don't like XD
> 
> For anyone interested, my musings on the Scoobies and their slight bashing in this fic:  
> Since this is all from Buffy’s perspective, there is some light Scooby Bashing (or at least disapproving looks in their direction). That doesn’t mean that I think they had no right to react the way they did in the show--I think they had lots of valid reasons to feel slighted, although personally I think they were pretty crappy (but realistic) in Dead Man’s Party. However, Buffy doesn’t have the same insight to their conversations and summer without her that we as the audience do--so I think from her end of things, their arguments are hard to understand; it would feel unfair and overwhelming. There are a lot of hurt feelings on both sides, which is why I wanted to write this fic in the first place: because as much as these kids go through, Buffy leaving is a very different kind of trauma that breaks the trust between them.... and the show kind of rushes past it by interrupting the arguments with "look, now there's zombies!" and then by the end of the episode things are more or less resolved. We get a few comments about it throughout early season 3, but we don't really see anyone sit down and explain each side of the story--enough time passes that they just stop talking about it, rather than dealing with those issues. All that being said, again: because this fic is from Buffy's perspective and we don't get that other side, the Scoobies are inevitably going to sometimes come off as being kind of dicks. Don't worry, they'll get more of a say later on :) 
> 
> Anyway, that's all for now! Love you all tons and I'll see you guys soon. <3


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